by the last of his wits
by whotellsyourstory
Summary: Rhodey had watched Tony take a swan dive hundreds of times, but he had never let him fall.


When Rhodey was thirteen, his little brother fell into a lake. He'd watched the whole thing – the water was shallow, and the kid was stumbling up and down a rocky ledge, running half the length of the shore. It was only a matter of time before the idiot tripped. Rhodey had said nothing, deciding it wasn't his fault or responsibility, and let it happen.

His brother cried for half an hour. Rhodey crossed his arms and called him stupid, which earned him a cuff round the head.

_You can either hold him up or let him fall_, his mother had scolded, _there's no in-between._

That was the day Rhodey realized stupidity was a collective endeavor. He'd take on half the racists in town for his little brother, after all – if he was so willing to protect him from the world, why was it any different when it came to protecting him from himself? Loyalty, he decided, was no friend of wisdom, and Rhodey was no great carrier of humanitarian life lessons.

A brother was a brother, and Rhodey was supposed to keep him above water. At some point, everyone had to figure out there were selfish people in the world, and there were people who let them be selfish. Rhodey, like anyone before him, had to pick which he could live with, which one he'd become.

* * *

Fifteen-year-old kids shouldn't be allowed to wander onto the MIT campus, but Tony had strutted his way to everywhere before his voice had fully dropped, and that's exactly how he walked into Rhodey's life.

Tony was a genius; Tony was the stupidest person Rhodey had ever met. It explained why the strut was presented, the day they met, in tandem with ragged breathing and a gaping wound on his thigh, oozing blood that had already stained his pants all the way down to his ankle. The fabric was torn in a rough pattern from hip to knee.

Rhodey found him lounging by the entrance to his dorm, at two in the morning. Rhodey was coming back, exhausted, from the campus library, having spent several mind-numbing hours cramming page after page of mostly useless information, because Rhodey had an exam in the morning.

The kid blinked at him lazily when Rhodey stopped in front of him.

"You want in?" Rhodey asked, gesturing at the door. "Or should I call someone for you?"

"Like who?"

"Like the cops."

"No cops. No hospital, either."

"'Kay. So you wanna come inside, then?"

The kid tilted his head at him, and in his state, it was frankly impressive how much commitment he was displaying to acting like a detached little shit. "Someone's painting your front yard with bodily fluids-"

"Not my yard-"

"-Tells you he doesn't wanna call the police or an ambulance, and you invite him up for- what, coffee? Booty call?"

"First aid," Rhodey corrected.

He was stared at shrewdly, like the guy bleeding out by the second was taking Rhodey's measure. "You're crazy."

"You're about thirty minutes away from incoherency."

The kid wobbled over, shrugging. "Worst that could happen is you stab another hole into me."

"Probably your fastest way to get rid of the pain, too, 'cause all I have is ibuprofen."

"My name is Tony," Tony offered cheerfully in response. His breathing was increasingly labored.

"James Rhodes," Rhodey offered, because he was trying to make a point, which Tony deliberately chose to miss. He snaked an arm under the kid's shoulders and held up most of his weight on the way in.

Tony settled on Rhodey's couch, in his mess of a bedroom, like he owned the place without a word of invitation. Rhodey left to get himself a clean towel, and by the time he returned, Tony was taking apart his stereo.

"You're a student here too," Rhodey noted, removing the metal casing from his hands. There were tiny, fingerprint-shaped blood stains on it.

"It's broken," Tony argued, letting Rhodey shove him back down on the couch. "I can fix it."

"No, it's not, and no, you can't."

"Bet it plays louder on the left than it does on the right."

Rhodey refrained from letting Tony see his reaction to that, because it was actually true. He wrapped the towel around the kid's leg and a tiny bloom of blood instantly formed against the white of the fabric. Tony eyed it curiously, and Rhodey noticed his shivering was increasing in intensity. He had no idea how he still managed to act so lively.

"You should really consider a trip to the emergency room," he advised calmly.

Tony wrinkled his nose. "Didn't nick the artery. I just need an extra large steak when I wake up."

Rhodey was nothing if not adaptable, especially as a college student, even faced with this kind of idiocy. "I need to go out and buy you bandages or something. You're gonna bleed out at this rate."

Tony picked at the towel. "No worries, I'm already bleeding in as well, likely redundant at this point."

"Are you gonna rob me while I'm out?"

The amusement on Tony's face tripled at that, like there was a secret to be discovered right there in plain sight, and Rhodey wasn't catching wind of it. "Do I look like I'm in a position to rob you? There's a gaping hole in my leg."

Rhodey observed him critically for a second. "I'll have someone bring us the bandages."

Tony snorted, then giggled, and didn't seem to care that it made him wheeze in pain. "So, you're crazy, but not a complete moron."

"I'm very complex," Rhodey agreed. "How old are you?"

"Danger. Shit, wrong question."

An actual child, that's what Rhodey was currently dealing with. "So, not nearly old enough to get so drunk you end up in a bar fight."

"Elitist."

"Is there glass I should be fishing out?"

"Did that myself."

And Rhodey was sure he'd done a bang-up job. "Alright, if there's no one I should be calling, stay here and don't die in my room."

Tony stared at him and readjusted the towel. "Are you gonna ask me what happened?"

"Are you gonna tell me?"

The kid grinned. "Night, Rhodey."

"It's _Rhodes._"

"Not anymore, it isn't. I can always call you _sugarplum_."

"Rhodey's fine. What's yours?"

"I'd tell you, but then you'd find out who I am." Rhodey glanced over in surprise. Tony wasn't looking at him, affecting a careless demeanor that was probably more to his benefit than it was to Rhodey's. "My father's maxed out his disappointment in me, I'd rather he not find out I ruined a pair of perfectly good jeans."

Rhodey had an exam in the morning. Rhodey was exhausted, and Rhodey was a stressed-out college student wearing a sweat-stained hoodie. Faced with a childish, precocious fifteen-year-old – one who fancied himself inscrutable, and yet had overtly and glaringly exhibited ninety per cent of his character in the twenty minutes Rhodey had known him – he did the only thing he could do, in that moment.

"Listen, kid," Rhodey told him, impatient, "everybody's got daddy issues, these days. No need to be a pussy about it," he advised, and Tony laughed so hard, he rolled right off the couch.

He found out he'd stitched up Tony _Stark_ when the kid woke up in the morning and a bodyguard barged into Rhodey's apartment to drag him away. He kept Tony's number for reasons unknown to either of them. He _used _Tony's number for reasons he rationalized very poorly – clearly, _someone_ had to save the kid from himself. He stopped calling the kid a kid the third time he caught him charming the pants off a sophomore.

Their university days were spent in a haze of Tony's vices, and Rhodey watched him thrive in every academic challenge he undertook while drunk off his mind on alcohol, loud music, and people. The people were the worst, Rhodey always thought, because people had agency. People weren't a tool for fixing Tony's problems, and every time they – or Tony – forgot that, someone got hurt. Maybe he was one of those guys who were better off alone.

Rhodey didn't know if whatever rage and resentment Tony carried with him ever faded, but he stopped talking about it so brazenly. Tony was rich, gorgeous, clever, and deviously charming, and he therefore had access to every ill-advised coping mechanism in the book. Rhodey watched as he slowly built an impenetrable suit of armor around him that painted a beautiful picture of someone who knew exactly what to show others in order to be seen a certain way – sometimes, he thought he'd only been allowed in because he'd glimpsed it before it was there.

"That girlfriend of yours," Tony said, watching Rhodey work on a project he'd finished about a month previous, "you gonna marry her? You're like forty, right?"

It was mid-winter, and the sky was pitch-dark. Tony had bags under his eyes because he'd been out partying late, for a complete lack of change; his hair was disheveled, and he was wearing one of Rhodey's MIT hoodies. Sometimes, Rhodey wondered why they were friends at all, with how vastly different their lives were. Tony kept coming back, sticking around to move things along when Rhodey struggled in an assignment, or finishing a piece of code when Rhodey crashed asleep on his desk.

Rhodey blearily blinked at him. "What is it about writing in assembly that's bringing out the romantic in you?"

Tony yawned. "You don't _write _assembly. You translate it from an alien-mandarin hybrid and hope it doesn't kill whoever's plugged to the other outlets in your house."

"I dunno who I'm marrying." Not her, though. Rhodey forgot her name with the years gone by.

Back in the past, Tony sat up to consider him thoughtfully. "But you're hoping."

"What's the point of a relationship without hope?"

Tony laid back down. "Well, I'm a cynic."

Rhodey's mouth was moving before he quite knew what he was doing. "No, you're not."

Pausing, Tony looked up to squint at him in one of his patented looks. It was calling Rhodey an idiot. "Prove me wrong."

Rhodey laughed. "Yeah. People like you, you _want _to be proven wrong. You _want_ to get hit over the head with the good things the universe has to give when you least expect it. Your cynicism isn't a statement, it's a challenge. If you make enough of a fuss, maybe someone will take it."

Tony fidgeted, and instead of the rude, deflective joke Rhodey had been expecting, he gave him a curious glance instead. "Who proved _you_ wrong?"

Rhodey snorted. "Who? It's not anyone's job to _save_ you. By all means, let them all show you the world, but in the end, you choose what to do with it. How you live in it."

Tony went very quiet and didn't say anything else. Once in a blue moon, Rhodey regretted that conversation. It showcased exactly who Tony was, at his core, and who he was trying to present as, at his shallowest.

Pepper Potts was Tony's complete lack of cynicism come to life.

Rhodey met her in the same chaotic way of every other thing that connected him to Tony's life – Tony was bored one day, and walked into Rhodey's apartment in time for Rhodey to feed him.

"There aren't enough women around here," his friend had declared, not bothering with preambles.

Rhodey didn't even look up from the pasta he was cooking. "Like in a sexist way or a feminist way?"

"Why can't it be both?"

MIT had been years ago, but very little had changed aside from living arrangements. Tony was being groomed for SI, these days, and he was still doing it under the influence and in the company of a rotating cast of worthless people who stayed just long enough for the haze of lust to pass. Rhodey had gone the military route. His leave was always spent in Tony's company, one way or another, even if it materialized in incessant house calls.

"Did you meet a girl you actually _want _to keep around or something?"

The ensuing silence finally made Rhodey turn around to stare at Tony. "Woah. Well, don't choose _now _to shut up for the first time in your life."

Tony let himself sink into Rhodey's couch. "She works for SI. I'm gonna triple her salary to switch her job description to _Tony Stark's Personal Assistant_."

"Even when you're besotted, you act like a sleaze."

Ms. Potts was an elegant, intelligent woman fazed by absolutely nothing, and Tony looked at her like he had gazed upon the face of god. Rhodey expected absolutely nothing to come of it – Pepper was far too smart to fall for Tony's shallow charms and Tony was far too scared and idiotic to make himself available for anything deeper.

The first words he heard come out of her mouth painted the whole of that picture in stark detail for Rhodey.

"Mr. Stark," she greeted smoothly, walking into the Malibu residence's workshop not a day after Rhodey and Tony's pasta date, "there are pictures of you on the internet in various stages of undress."

Tony didn't miss a beat. "There are pictures of me on the internet in all stages of undress."

Rhodey was only there in his capacity as the SI liaison to the army's weapon development division. He was supposed to get an update on an upcoming shipment. Pepper was clearly aware of this, from the tight smile she offered him upon taking notice of his presence. Rhodey didn't want any part of this third-wheeling.

"We'll put a pin in this," he suggested awkwardly, already halfway out the door.

Tony wasn't paying attention; Pepper's focus was back on him. "Have you considered the cost-benefit analysis of taking them down versus leaving them up?"

"Yes. So far, the main cost is how boring the effort to take them down would be."

"The main benefit is your junk being kept private from your future children, so let's concentrate on that-"

"I'm not having children-"

"I'm not convinced you don't have a handful already."

Rhodey stopped listening to their voices in the distance.

The way Rhodey's relationship with Pepper worked was that she was the strength and he was the optimism. It meant that he was allowed to falter, but she never could. When Tony vanished into the sand of the Afghan desert for three months, she and her tears were the first and foremost thing fueling Rhodey's faith.

_You are more than what you are_, Rhodey had told him, and Tony had politely requested that he act less drunk. The years had funny ways of changing people.

"You're so sure," Pepper whispered after yet another disappointing check-in with no updates from Rhodey, "how can you be so sure?"

"He'll scrape by the last of his wits to keep himself alive, Pepper," he'd promised back. "By the last of his strength. He won't give up."

"And that's enough?"

"With his brains? Yeah, it is."

The Iron Man mask always looked livid. Anger was one of its insulating layers. Rhodey knew he'd been right, but not _this _right.

It took Rhodey his time to catch up. He recognized his friend, he knew who Tony was, deep down – but the armor changed him and his ways faster than Rhodey was able to keep up with. He was scared Tony had let something ugly and dark seep inside him with the sleek red and gold metal of his newest shield. But Tony berated him for _doing your job for you_, and saved a pilot with a broken parachute, and Rhodey understood that, in-between all the hard edges and cutting lines, it was all good and wondrous, whatever had truly seeped inside. A promise of something awe-inspiring.

"That's the coolest thing I've ever seen," he swore, not quite rendered speechless.

"Not bad, huh?" Tony quipped back. Rhodey watched him build himself to supersonic speeds on the fuel of his mind alone, in a tin of can that was the purest product of his intelligence, and figured _not bad _was not a bad way to put it.

* * *

Tony knew nothing better than he knew death. It took Rhodey a very short few years to figure it out – his brilliant friend, a genius, an expert in every subject under the sun, and his concept of choice was the one everyone naturally shied away from. It wasn't even morbid, it genuinely fascinated Tony, at first – Rhodey could tell. It was probably a consequence of his precocious proximity to it.

"When it's my funeral, will you stop by?" Tony had asked of him, the day his parents had died. The words were slurred – he was characteristically drunk for an uncharacteristic reason – and Rhodey pursed his lips in response. "Just so there's _someone_ there."

"You die before me, I'll kill you," Rhodey threatened, the first time he'd allowed himself to express open affection for the intoxicated asshole two seconds away from being sick all over his lap.

"God, Rhodes, that line was old the first time someone used it, in whatever soap opera invented bromance."

"I'm serious."

Tony permitted himself a smirk. "Race you to the finish line."

It was the most macabre conversation Rhodey had ever had. He hadn't even known how much depth there was to it, not then.

The problem with the looming prospect of Tony's death was how much of Rhodey's life had been crafted for, around, by and because of Tony Stark. Even before War Machine and SI, Tony had been there – the terrified, cocky, dumbass teenager someone had dropped in a college campus, allowed to fend for himself.

War Machine eventually brought Rhodey the understanding that Tony would die for him, if he decided he had to. There were a million days, a million plays, a million dangerous moves over which Pepper would kill Tony, if she ever found out about them. Maybe the memory occurring to Rhodey was one of them, maybe it was all of them.

It was always the same picture, either way. A flash of red, glittering in some triumphant way, and the relief chasing it – Iron Man was Rhodey's hero, too. And then some inevitable injury, or near-miss, the ever-present consequences of Tony's lack of self-preservation. Maybe he was blasted two hundred meters too far, maybe his power source faltered, maybe something managed to chip away at his metal plating.

War Machine wasn't so fast. He always landed a second too late.

"Color me a swooning damsel no longer in distress," Tony would say with an eyeroll, once or twice, all quip and deadpan, and the moment would slip away again, another date on a tombstone that would never be carved. Every day, Rhodey could feel the chisel coming closer.

He'd started keeping a list, years before. He caught Tony binge-coding a personalized tablet for his assistant, once, and added Pepper Potts onto it. He caught him completely redesigning the original Stark Tower plans to include an entire apartment floor for _Captain America_, and added the Avengers to the list. He caught him replacing AC/DC with Spider-Man's rambling 'mission report' voicemails as his lab background noise, and added Peter Parker.

There was a specific day, when Earth – and New York, in particular – learned about aliens and aliens' unfriendliness, that Rhodey realized the list of people Tony would die for was far, far longer than Rhodey had any hope of writing. There was no one, in the whole wide universe, Tony was willing to leave out of that list.

(Rhodey remembered the list anyway. It was helpful, knowing exactly which people in the universe cared about Tony the way Rhodey did.)

It wasn't just PTSD, anxiety, after New York; the scary thoughts that inevitably chased away any promise Tony had ever had of peace – it was the _knowledge_. Tony's universe had a linchpin, a web made up of the most important things he got to keep. That single, oxygen-deprived vision of an army beyond the wormhole was the evil threatening to take it all away, and in that sense, it replaced everything as the center of his life. It took Rhodey a very long time to see it the way he did – the death of everything and everyone important, unless Tony _did something about it_.

"We can't break up now, Rhodey," Tony had told him urgently, not far into their mess with the accords. Pepper had been gone for three days and his hands already shook like the world was caving into pieces. Rhodey thought about a bright-eyed teenager, bleeding all over his MIT dorm. "_Not now_. No Ultron, no Hulk, no Thor, and no Avengers? There'll be nothing left – we'll be an open target."

_Target for what? _Rhodey's thoughts, back then, were so naïve. Everything was blown out of proportion by Tony's panic, until it wasn't. "We won't break up."

_You can either hold him up_, Rhodey hummed to himself, zooming away after a self-assured glint of red and gold, from mission to mission, from disaster to triumph, from stupidity to heroics, _or let him fall_.

The thing was, Iron Man could fly – Tony could fly, and Rhodey was always a step behind. One hum-drum-vee away from where his friend needed him; one lie between him and Tony's spiral; miles and miles away from him when he sprinted into each and every one of his near-death scientific experiments. No one was ever fast enough to keep up with Iron Man.

Tony was _brilliant_, in every sense of the word. _Good people aren't born, they're built_ – Rhodey's little brother had said this to him, once, a sage look on his face, and it kept Rhodey standing by Tony's side after everything, every bad and good day. Rhodey signed the accords because there were seven billion souls he'd be letting fall alongside Tony if he didn't.

Iron Man was always just ahead. Rhodey tried to keep pace with Tony until he couldn't walk by himself anymore.

(_There is no in-between._)

Tony built him leg braces – Rhodey learned they held him up just as well. Occasionally, when Tony thought Rhodey wasn't looking, he let an ancient, lonely glaze resurface over his eyes again – apart from that, nothing else really changed.

Both of them had evolved a lot through the years. Rhodey watched Tony's transformations happen with trepidation every time, and every time Tony genuinely surprised him for the better. When he and Pepper moved away and had a daughter by a lake, after the end of the world, it was just one more surprise. It felt like it had when Tony abruptly announced SI was severing all ties to the armed forces, all those years before – _one more time_, the bereaved Tony in his head whispered, _I choose life over death one more time_.

It never took, but, after meeting Morgan Stark, Rhodey decided not to mention it.

* * *

Tony won their race. And of course he did – Rhodey was always a step behind.

"It's like we're back in MIT, and he's binging through his assignments," Rhodey had told Pepper, back when Iron Man was born, and the missions were all new and urgent and exciting. "A week straight running on coffee."

"I don't think he's the kind of person that has to scrape the last of his strength to keep going," Pepper had replied, softly, even back then alerting Rhodey to how much wiser she was to the contents of Tony's character. "I think he's the kind of person who's going to lack the strength to give up, when the moment comes."

Pepper was a widowed mom, now, and Rhodey was left wondering if this was the moment she had pictured. The worst part wasn't even that Rhodey knew Tony's last moments were spent memorizing what he saw as his victory. The worst part was that Rhodey was certain Pepper knew it too, and she'd learned to live with it long before Rhodey started to grapple with the idea.

Of all the shifting parts that made up Tony Stark, the people he loved had always been Tony's favorite. Once he picked someone as _his_, he cared with all of himself, fierce and unbounded. There were exactly two degrees of warmth in his emotional arsenal – chilly indifference and feverish devotion. There was no middle ground, and the only person Rhodey had ever seen take the overnight switch in stride was Pepper.

_Everything's a story if you're not there when it happens._ The memories didn't come to Rhodey, over the weeks and months to follow, in the form of a nicely wrapped up continuous play, complete with a bow. More like choppy pieces of a movie nobody had bothered to put in order, and now he was left picking them all up.

"I'm not sure it'll ever stop," Tony had murmured, one of those rainy days when his age showed better in the greying hair and shadowy lines on his face. "I don't think I can stop it."

"What's that?" Rhodey called back, distractedly fiddling with an itch that wasn't real, somewhere near his ankle. Peter had just left the compound for the day, and Tony always got a little morose every time their training sessions came to a close.

Silence was his only response. Rhodey walked around the bar to find his friend lying on the couch, staring out the window with glassy eyes, a hand thrown behind his head. "Tones."

"Say, Rhodey, what do you do about the bus that could hit you tomorrow?"

Rhodey leaned against the wall and pondered the question. "Bus isn't here yet."

"What does _that _mean?"

"Means I don't know about the bus, what am I supposed to do about it?"

Tony jolted up then, and Rhodey felt a little better to see him energized in that familiar way. "But you _do _know about it."

"Then why would I get in its way? Do something about it."

"_Exactly._"

Something in Tony's voice gave Rhodey pause. "Isn't it more likely that- Our line of work has less buses than it has, like- Asgardian trial-by-fire-type tournaments, to figure out who gets the throne or something, doesn't it?"

"That was weirdly specific."

"Bet it involves actual swords. Maybe hounds, too. Space hounds. And gory violence. Bet they'll decide to hold in on top of the Empire State Building next Monday."

Tony snorted, then laughed. "So – Empire State Building, next Monday. What do I do about it?"

Rhodey's eyebrows went up. "Dunno. What do you do about it?"

"I asked first," Tony complained.

"I asked second."

"People could die. Those Asgardian swords are sharp." It was said with a light tone of voice, but not really.

Rhodey shifted. "Yeah. They could die getting hit by a bus, too."

"But I know about the bus, Rhodey. If I only have until Monday-"

"Today's Tuesday, Tony."

"Yeah? _Plan ahead, Tony_," Tony said in a high-pitched, mocking tone of voice. "_Take some responsibility, Tony. Don't be so careless, reckless, Tony. _What was the point of nagging me for years-"

Rhodey interrupted his spiel. "Do you know what to do about it?"

"About what?"

"About next Monday. About the bus."

"I don't think so. Everything I've tried- it all failed."

Rhodey smiled at him. "Okay. Wanna go play pool?"

"Shouldn't I be out looking for Asgardian space hounds?" Tony asked, grinning in amusement.

Rhodey had shrugged. "Bus isn't here yet."

The day of the funeral was a beautiful one, and so was its setting. The lake reflected the sky, the people clad in all black, the wreath Pepper laid on the water, a perfect mirror. Rhodey had never felt more alone.

"How you holding up?" he asked Pepper, and she told him she was _doing just fine, thank you_. "You gonna be okay, little miss?" he wondered of Morgan, who'd looked him in the eye and replied "no" so matter-of-factly, Rhodey had to walk away. "You need anything?" he said to Peter, hoping the kid would take it as a promise, but Peter shook his head mutely and offered him a strained smile.

"You alright?" he mumbled in the direction of a boy he didn't even know, a tall gangly teenager who'd shown up late, kissed Pepper on the cheek, and hung around in the back for the entire ceremony.

The kid arched a brow at him. "Are you?"

Tony had a very crowded funeral. And the way the world was having it, it went on for months. The celebration of half the lives in the universe, and the death of one.

Rhodey never thought himself the type of person who would need to speak to a grave, but the years had funny ways of changing people. Life was a series of unfinished conversations, that was a lesson Tony had taught him. "Sometimes," he said to one of Tony's memorials, "I imagine a world where I have the power to save you. Every single time, you tell me you're the only one with the power to save yourself. Self-righteous bastard." Tony couldn't return the volley, not anymore.

_I believed in him first_, Rhodey thought, walking around this strange new world that didn't have Tony Stark in it. A ghost on every wall, on every window; every step he took revealed someone else's tribute. One after another, so many, and every single one painted with the care and devotion of a life that Tony had touched but never come near.

Rhodey stopped to admire a mural in Queens, only once – the sight of an Iron Man suit, flying in all his glory, as though painted from the perspective of a child's adoring gaze – and it made him think, fiercely proud, _I loved him first_.


End file.
